Exploring the Newest UNESCO Heritage Site - Steve Boyes

Twenty First Century exploration is usually marked not by “filling in the blank areas of the map,” as it was in centuries past, but by the improved understanding of an ecosystem deep in the ocean or on the edges of our solar system – places that can scarcely be imagined by non-scientists. But National Geographic’s Steve Boyes has recruited a team of his fellow Emerging Explorers to venture deep into Botswana’s Okavango Delta, to paddle barefoot in stand-up kayaks through waters haunted by hippos, crocodiles and elephants, like in the days of the earliest European adventures into Africa's waterways. The expedition is part of a nine-year survey to better understand a wetland so remote that only local tribes who have mastered survival over hundreds of years maintain a presence there. The team's 2014 Okavango adventure will go from from August 16 to 25.